Here is a list of some Scottish Holidays

January 25 (1759): Robert Burns Day

Celebrating the birth of Scotland’s acclaimed national poet. Burn’s Day is considered Scotland’s 2nd national holiday, second only to St. Andrew’s Day and Burn’s Night Suppers are a long held tradition. Check out or section on hosting a Burns Dinner.

Celebrating Welsh heritage and the Patron Saint of Wales. Saint David (Dewi Sant) lived in 6th century England is said to have been the son of the King of Ceredigion (a coastal region on the west coast of mid-Wales).

Celebrating Irish heritage and the Patron Saint of Ireland. Saint Patrick, believed to have been born in Scotland or Wales. Legend has it he was kidnapped by pirates (seafaring Irish marauders) as a young pagan teen. After 6 years in captivity (about 407 AD), he escaped and fled to a monastery in Gaul, where he became a Christian Monk and studied under St. Germain for 12 years. He was eventually appointed as the 2nd Bishop of Ireland and worked to convert pagan Celtic Druids to Christianity while establishing monasteries and Catholic schools on the Emerald Isle. His mission in Ireland lasted 30 years and he retired to County Down. He died on March 17th, 461 A.D. St. Pat is said to have used the 3-leaf clover (shamrock) to explain the Holy-Trinity to the tree-hugging Druids. He is also credited with driving all of the snakes out of Ireland. His Catholic feast day, which actually celebrates the day of his death, has become one of the world’s most popular secular holidays, marked by excessive alcohol consumption and the wearing o’ the green.

The Anniversary of The Declaration of Arbroath,More details at www.tartanday.org.

The 42nd Highland Regiment, the “Black Watch”, is given its ‘Royal’ designation. Be sure to break out your Black Watch Tartan and celebrate one of the fiercest military units in world history!

The Anniversary of The Act of Proscription - Put on your kilt, which was outlawed in this day by the Crown as an instrument of war. It remained a crime to use bagpipes, wear a kilt or any tartan for 35 years and 11 months (until the repeal on July 1, 1792).

A day of mourning for Sir William Wallace, renowned, liberator, patriot and protector of Scotland, credited with leading the resistance to the English occupation of Scotland during the Wars of Scottish Independence . He was executed (hanged, disemboweled and beheaded) in London on this day in 1305. Wallace was the main character in Braveheart, Mel Gibson’s epic 1995 film that artfully romanticized the Scots’ 13th Century battles to overthrow English rule.

Celebrating Scottish heritage and the Patron Saint of Scotland. Saint Andrew (pictured at the top of this page) is also specifically named in the Declaration of Arbroath. Andrew or “Andreas the Apostle” was the very first Christian Apostle, chosen by Christ. The brother of Simon Peter (Saint Peter, the first Pope) and a follower of John the Baptist, in the Gospels. It is Andrew that introduced his brother, Simon, to Jesus. Simon was renamed Peter, upon their meeting.